John French with Hasselblad, photo collage/ hand cut paper on wooden panel, by Lola Dupre which will be part of tomorrow's opening of "Salt the Skies" at FFDG in San Francisco. 2277 Mission St. (6-9pm) - RSVP here.

Preview inquires, email info(at)ffdg.net

Lola Dupre
Lola Dupre is a collage artist and illustrator currently based near Elche, Spain. Her work has been featured in exhibitions in the USA, Germany, Japan, France, Australia, England, Scotland and Japan in recent years. Publications include, New York Magazine, the New Republic, Flaunt, Die Welt and Hi-Fructose. Currently she is working towards a solo show with CES Contemporary (Los Angeles) to open on the 5th of April 2014, and group shows at Glasgow International Art Festival and at London England's, Rook and Raven Gallery. From political portraits, to fashion editorial, key themes include the grotesque and the beautiful. Apparent in her work is an obsessive attention to detail and a wide pallet of influence.
http://www.loladupre.com/

SAN FRANCISCO --- Kerry Miller's (UK) deconstructed books are fascinating. In her new body of work, Re-Imagination of the Book now running at The Shooting Gallery through March 8th, she does just that - re-imagines old and discarded books into newly complex works of art.

The books seem simple enough, they are just cut pages layered on one another, but they are so intricate they can draw your attention for hours, much like the words in the books themselves. Most of the crowd was gathered in the front galleries, like moths to bright colors, but I have a feeling that those who made it to the back were glad they did. These books provide some contrast to the paintings and crochet installation in the front and really bring minute details into focus. Go check them out before the show closes on March 8th.

Collage artist Ashkan Honarvar (1980, Iran) and photgrapher Claudia Crobatia (1984, the Netherlands) emailed over a recent photo collage project entitled Possession. We explored the idea of a possessed cat through visualizing unknown forces that deform an animals physical form and behavior. The concept of possession came out of our interest in human relationships with their pets, which sometimes tend to become slightly obsessive, no matter how lovingly.

SAN FRANCISCO --- I was fortunate to beat the crowds to the openings of Greg Gossel's (Minneapolis, MN) Head Over Heels and David Marc Grant's (SF) My Magic Will Bring them Back last Saturday night at White Walls, allowing me to actually see and get photos of the work during the opening.

Like most of the other visitors, it was a quick trip through Head Over Heels, as the pieces all look almost exactly the same, and felt like contrived graffiti in the pristine space. However, entering My Magic Will Bring Them Back, visitors entered an environment, and spent more time with the work. Each piece contains immense detail and the installation helped to tie it all together and created a fun world for visitors to interact with it. Grant was also there talking with visitors, enhancing the inviting atmosphere of the small project space and the crowd seemed to respond by gathering in the small room, even though it was a tight squeeze. The show definitely deserves a visit, and I hope next month, there will be something other than Gossel's hot chicks in the main gallery of the space.

Words & Photos: Rachel Ralph - rachel(at)fecalface.com

Greg Gossel, Head Over Heels 1, Mixed-media on Canvas, 48x72", Photo in piece by Bryan Adams

Lola Dupre makes very beautifully intricate collages and is in a group show at CES Contemporary in Laguna Beach, California opening Saturday, Feb 16th.

Her piece below titled Processionary Squares | 100cm x 100cm / 39.5' x 39.5' will be in the show, and she emailed these process photos to give a little insight into her process... her, what we imagine to be, very patient time consuming process. Steady hand, Lola. Great work.

Thanks to Lavender Wolf who mailed us a copy of his new(ish) zine CUT IT OUT!

Lavender Wolf would like to place admirers of his work under house arrest! He's substituting handcuffs for a full color, limited edition zine that's sure to captivate and command your attention.
CUT IT OUT! is the first published collection of Lavender Wolf's paper cuts, containing new, never before seen images, and celebrated favorites. Printed in color in an edition of a hundred and one, CUT IT OUT! is thirty-five pages, each issue being hand numbered and signed by the artist. CUT IT OUT! is available for eight euros. If postage and packaging is required, the zine is available for 12 euros in Europe and the United States. Please send all purchase inquiries to lavenderandthewolf(at)gmail.com and include the number of copies that you'd like to order, along with your mailing address if necessary.

LA Based Bryan Schnelle emailed some of his recent collage works. A year and a half ago we asked Bryan, in this interview, Describe your process for creating new work.

Bryan wrote: I look at a lot of magazines. Occasionally I'll see something that really strikes me for whatever reason, something that will work on its own, as a separate work on paper, tear it out and set it aside. But usually I'm working on something big or elaborate, so I'm just scanning various magazines looking for what I need at that particular time. If I'm working on a large-scale painting I'll find all of the pages that I'm going to need and work on getting those ready first. Then comes the fun part (building, stretching, priming, painting, gluing…) A large scale collage painting is such an undertaking that I have to have a solid idea before I even begin. That's why it's good to work on the small works on magazine pages in between the big stuff; they're so quick that they allow for a certain freedom of experimentation. I need that balance. I get really bored if I start to feel like I'm repeating myself. I need constant progression.

Having been longtime fans of one another's work, Michelle Blade and I thought it would be interesting to talk about our ideas, inspirations and work processes as well as our concurrent solo exhibitions at KRETS, in Sweden and Carter & Citizen in Los Angeles. The conversation, passed back and forth between email over a week, took place as follows... -Alexis Mackenzie

Alexis Mackenzie

Michelle Blade

Blade: Okay, to get the ball rolling I think I should start with a basic, but crucial, question: I've always been curious, where do you find your gorgeous source material?

Mackenzie: It all comes from used books; here in SF I mostly buy them at Green Apple Books or Adobe Books ~ so sad they are having to close! I also have a friend who is a book reseller; he keeps an eye out for books for me, and has found me some really amazing things. Most of the books I use are topical; vintage books about botany, rocks & minerals, fashion, and anatomy mostly. Lately I've been looking more for photographic source material that includes objects, such as decorative art ~ vases, frames, furniture ~ things I can build interior scenes with.

Blade: It seems like part of your process is about balancing your intuitive response to found imagery while simultaneously preplanning abstract shapes and text. Can you describe how you move back and forth between the two? When do you know a collage is completed?

Alexis Mackenzie

Michelle Blade

Mackenzie: You're completely right; for my text-based collages, finding that balance mostly consists of having a letter-shape in mind, and searching for an image that resonates with me, which I can twist into the shape I need and melds with everything else around it. It is a long process of searching, cutting, arranging, rearranging, searching, cutting, and rearranging some more. Generally I stop when it feels like a completed scene. I don't glue anything down until this happens, because if I decide to add anything it may change the balance of everything else, thus necessitating changes. My process for the abstract line collages is the complete opposite; everything is unplanned. I'll chose an existing cut-out silhouette from the millions I have floating around in stacks, one that has a shape which is interesting and compliments the found image I'm working on in a dynamic way (or is compelling enough on its own, for working on blank paper), and I just start cutting & pasting, working with the existing shapes and trying to create something resonant. It is a much more freeform approach; I sometimes think of it as drawing, in a way.

Blade: You have some really interesting text in some of your pieces. What is your process for finding or writing these phrases? Is there a story behind "Look Alive", the title for your current solo show at KRETS?

I don't think at this point it needs to be written since the last update to Fecal Face was a long time ago, but...

I, John Trippe, have put this baby Fecal Face to bed. I'm now focusing my efforts on running ECommerce at DLX which I'm very excited about... I guess you can't take skateboarding out of a skateboarder.

It was a great 15 years, and most of that effort can still be found within the site. Click around. There's a lot of content to explore.

I'm not sure how many people are lucky enough to have The San Francisco Giants 3 World Series trophies put on display at their work for the company's employees to enjoy during their lunch break, but that's what happened the other day at Deluxe. So great.

When works of art become commodities and nothing else, when every endeavor becomes “creative” and everybody “a creative,” then art sinks back to craft and artists back to artisans—a word that, in its adjectival form, at least, is newly popular again. Artisanal pickles, artisanal poems: what’s the difference, after all? So “art” itself may disappear: art as Art, that old high thing. Which—unless, like me, you think we need a vessel for our inner life—is nothing much to mourn.

Hard-working artisan, solitary genius, credentialed professional—the image of the artist has changed radically over the centuries. What if the latest model to emerge means the end of art as we have known it? --continue reading

"[Satire] is important because it brings out the flaws we all have and throws them up on the screen of another person," said Turner. “How they react sort of shows how important that really is.” Later, he added, "Charlie took a hit for everybody." -read on

NYC --- A new graffiti abatement program put forth by the police commissioner has beat cops carrying cans of spray paint to fill in and cover graffiti artists work in an effort to clean up the city --> Many cops are thinking it's a waste of resources, but we're waiting to see someone make a project of it. Maybe instructions for the cops on where to fill-in?

The NYPD is arming its cops with cans of spray paint and giving them art-class-style lessons to tackle the scourge of urban graffiti, The Post has learned.

Shootings are on the rise across the city, but the directive from Police Headquarters is to hunt down street art and cover it with black, red and white spray paint, sources said... READ ON

We haven't been featuring many interviews as of late. Let's change that up as we check in with a few local San Francisco artists like Kevin Earl Taylor here whom we studio visited back in 2009 (PHOTOS & VIDEO). It's been awhile, Kevin...

If you like guns and boobs, head on over to the Shooting Gallery; just don't expect the work to be all cheap ploys and hot chicks. With Make Stuff by Peter Gronquist (Portland) in the main space and Morgan Slade's Snake in the Eagle's Shadow in the project space, there is plenty spectacle to be had, but if you look just beyond it, you might actually get something out of the shows.

Fifty24SF opened Street Anatomy, a new solo show by Austrian artist Nychos a week ago last Friday night. He's been steadily filling our city with murals over the last year, with one downtown on Geary St. last summer, and new ones both in the Haight and in Oakland within the last few weeks, but it was really great to see his work up close and in such detail.

Congrats on our buddies at Needles and Pens on being open and rad for 11 years now. Mission Local did this little short video featuring Breezy giving a little heads up on what Needles and Pens is all about.

Matt Wagner recently emailed over some photos from The Hellion Gallery in Tokyo, who recently put together a show with AJ Fosik (Portland) called Beast From a Foreign Land. The gallery gave twelve of Fosik's sculptures to twelve Japanese artists (including Hiro Kurata who is currently showing in our group show Salt the Skies) to paint, burn, or build upon.

Backwoods Gallery in Melbourne played host to a huge group exhibition a couple of weeks back, with "Gold Blood, Magic Weirdos" Curated by Melbourne artist Sean Morris. Gold Blood brought together 25 talented painters, illustrators and comic artists from Australia, the US, Singapore, England, France and Spain - and marked the end of the Magic Weirdos trilogy, following shows in Perth in 2012 and London in 2013.

San Francisco based Fecal Pal Jeremy Fish opened his latest solo show Hunting Trophies at LA's Mark Moore Gallery last week to massive crowds and cabin walls lined with imagery pertaining to modern conquest and obsession.

Well, John Felix Arnold III is at it again. This time, he and Carolyn LeBourgios packed an entire show into the back of a Prius and drove across the country to install it at Superchief Gallery in NYC. I met with him last week as he told me about the trip over delicious burritos at Taqueria Cancun (which is right across the street from FFDG and serves what I think is the best burrito in the city) as the self proclaimed "Only overweight artist in the game" spilled all the details.

Ever Gold opened a new solo show by NYC based Henry Gunderson a couple Saturday nights ago and it was literally packed. So packed I couldn't actually see most of the art - but a big crowd doesn't seem like a problem. I got a good laugh at what I would call the 'cock climbing wall' as it was one of the few pieces I could see over the crowd. I haven't gotten a chance to go back and check it all out again, but I'm definitely going to as the paintings that I could get a peek at were really high quality and intruiguing. You should do the same.

The paintings in the show are each influenced by a musician, ranging from Freddy Mercury, to Madonna, to A Tribe Called Quest and they are so stylistically consistent with each musician's persona that they read as a cohesive body of work with incredible variation. If you told me they were each painted by a different person, I would not hesitate to believe you and it's really great to see a solo show with so much variety. The show is fun, poppy, very well done, and absolutely worth a look and maybe even a listen.

With rising rent in SF and knowing mostly other young artists without capitol, I desired a way to live rent free, have a space to do my craft, and get to see more of the world. Inspired by the many historical artists who have longed similar longings I discovered the beauty of artist residencies. Lilo runs Adhoc Collective in Vienna which not only has a fully equipped artists creative studio, but an indoor halfpipe, and private artist quarters. It was like a modern day castle or skate cathedral. It exists in almost a utopic state, totally free to those that apply and come with a real passion for both art and skateboarding

I just wanted to share with you a piece I recently finished which took me 4 years to complete. Titled "How To Lose Yourself Completely (The September Issue)", it consists of a copy of the September 2007 issue of Vogue magazine (the issue they made the documentary about) with all faces masked with a sharpie, and everything else entirely whited out. 840 pages of fun. -Bryan Schnelle

Jeremy Fish opens Hunting Trophies tonight, Saturday April 5th, at the Los Angeles based Mark Moore Gallery. The show features new work from Fish inside the "hunting lodge" where viewers climb inside the head of the hunter and explore the history of all the animals he's killed.

Beautiful piece entitled "The Albatross and the Shipping Container", Ink on Paper, Mounted to Panel, 47" Diameter, by San Francisco based Martin Machado now on display at FFDG. Stop in Saturday (1-6pm) to view the group show "Salt the Skies" now running through April 19th. 2277 Mission St. at 19th.

For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to quit my job, move out of my house, leave everything and travel again. So on August 21, 2013 I pushed a canoe packed full of gear into the headwaters of the Mississippi River in Lake Itasca, Minnesota, along with four of my best friends. Exactly 100 days later, I arrived at a marina near the Gulf of Mexico in a sailboat.

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